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			<h1>Thawing</h1>
			<p>Day 00651: Saturday, 2016 December 17</p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2016/12/17.jpg" alt="Broken, fallen ice" class="weblog-header-image" width="809" height="480" />
<h2 id="general">General news</h2>
<p>
	<a href="https://wowana.me./">Wowaname</a> must&apos;ve rehashed their Web server configuration, because my new certificate is now in place!
</p>
<p>
	On my way to work, much to my delight, I saw the trees shedding their layer of ice.
	Water was dripping off the trees so quickly that when I first walked outside and say the water falling from the tree just past my porch, I legitimately thought that it was raining.
	Water wasn&apos;t the only thing falling from the trees either.
	As the ice melted, the remaining ice was becoming structurally unstable and falling apart.
	Underneath every tree that I saw was a puddle with scattered ice chunks, save for one tree, which had ice chunks covering the full area in which the puddle would have been.
	Ostensibly, there was liquid water under that though.
	The power lines are no longer crackling, and things are returning to normal.
</p>
<p>
	I had a night shift today, but not a closing shift.
	Non-closing night shifts seem to drag on forever, especially when you&apos;re at the station that involves flattening dough balls and placing them in pans, which is exactly where I was.
	We ended up having slow sales though, so I was sent home halfway through my shift.
</p>
<p>
	I hand washed a load of dishes, then started hand-washing a load of laundry.
	I had a bit of a headache though, so I didn&apos;t finish with the laundry and will work on that tomorrow.
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
<h2 id="university">University life</h2>
<p>
	Yesterday, I thought that my initial discussion post was due today for some reason.
	As such, I had planned to set aside today to work on that.
	However, it&apos;s actually due <strong>*tomorrow*</strong>, and seems like a fairly easy topic to discus.
	As such, I instead spent today searching for a topic for this week&apos;s essay.
</p>
<p>
	The essay for this week requires that I find a multinational corporation that I&apos;m familiar with and discuss it in terms of corporate social responsibility.
	I&apos;d love to tie this in with things that relate to my own interests by discussing a company that I can at least partially stand behind.
	To begin, I looked up a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/List_of_multinational_corporations">list of multinational corporations</a>, and glanced through to see if I recognized any as being decent companies.
	Much to my surprise, I saw the Wikimedia Foundation is listed.
	So ...
	the Wikimedia Foundation is a corporation? I did some research, but I couldn&apos;t find much at first.
	The Wikimedia Foundation is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/501(c)(3)">501(c)(3)</a> charitable organization, but are charitable organizations a type of corporation? I couldn&apos;t find any information backing up or disclaiming this.
	However, I eventually struck the jackpot.
	Wikipedia had this to say on the 501(c)(3) status of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Charitable_organization#United_States">Charitable organizations in the United States</a>:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	There are several requirements that must be met for a charitable organization to obtain 501(c)(3) status.
	These include the organization being organized as a corporation, trust, or unincorporated association, and the organization&apos;s organizing document (such as the articles of incorporation, trust documents, or articles of association) must limit its purposes to being charitable, and permanently dedicate its assets to charitable purposes.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	In other words, some 501(c)(3) charitable organizations are corporations, while others are instead trusts or unincorporated organizations.
	The Wikimedia Foundation is an international corporation! But is the <abbr title="Electronic Frontier Foundation">EFF</abbr>? I&apos;d love to write an essay on them.
	Frustratingly, I can&apos;t find any information on how to find which category (corporation, trust, or unincorporated association) a charitable organization falls into.
	I also can&apos;t find a way to look up more information about an organization by it&apos;s <abbr title="Employer Identification Number">EIN</abbr>, a tactic that I&apos;d hoped to use to find the information that I was looking for.
	Eventually though, I found a <a href="https://www.eff.org./files/2016/07/27/eff_fy15_form990publicdisclosure.pdf">tax document</a> filed by and published by the <abbr title="Electronic Frontier Foundation">EFF</abbr>.
	You&apos;ve got to love these peoples&apos; transparency.
	According to the document, the <abbr title="Electronic Frontier Foundation">EFF</abbr> is in fact registered as a corporation! I now have my essay topic.
</p>
<p>
	Doing this is more important than it seems on the surface.
	Sure, I love to talk up the <abbr title="Electronic Frontier Foundation">EFF</abbr>, but let&apos;s look at the alternative as well.
	I think that most students will be reporting on huge, money-making, power-hungry businesses that have managed to carve a place for themselves in the global market.
	That&apos;s fine.
	However, I&apos;m not overly familiar with these businesses, and the essay assignment specifically says to choose a corporation that I&apos;m familiar with.
	Business students such as those taking this class are better-prepared for this.
	I, however, am a non-business student trapped in a business course.
	I&apos;m barely keeping up with the course, and I have the most trouble when assignments are asking me to pull in previous knowledge, something that I lack in this field.
	The <abbr title="Electronic Frontier Foundation">EFF</abbr> as a topic is really my best chance to meet the assignment&apos;s criteria fully and completely.
	Likewise, simply researching to figure out if they&apos;d even <strong>*qualify*</strong> as a topic for this assignment lead me to learn something that I otherwise would likely have never known.
</p>
<p>
	I can&apos;t honestly sat that this&apos;ll all be about feasibility though.
	It&apos;ll be fun surprising the students grading my work with an unexpected corporation that in a strange twist is also a charity.
</p>
<p>
	...
	on second thought, this was a wasted effort and I wasted the entire day not getting anything productive done.
	The problem is that i must discuss the challenges that this organization faces in trying to set social and environmental goals in addition to their operating goals.
	For the <abbr title="Electronic Frontier Foundation">EFF</abbr>, social goals <strong>*are*</strong> their operating goals.
	I&apos;m also not sure that they really do anything to help on the environmental front.
	I&apos;ll have to find another international corporation, one that has separate social and operational goals, but hopefully one that&apos;s still ethical.
	Unless ...
	perhaps, I&apos;ve been looking at this all wrong.
	Maybe I don&apos;t need to write an essay that praises someone in order to tie this essay in and make it relevant to my life, but instead one that points out much of what&apos;s wrong with then; how they <strong>*fail*</strong> to operate in an ethical manner.
	I&apos;m somewhat familiar with certain international software corporations that behave very poorly.
	I&apos;d be a tough sell trying to convince people that their release of proprietary software is unethical, but I <strong>*can*</strong> point out all the other ways that they abuse their customers and in general how they don&apos;t behave ethically.
	I might be able to succeed at this assignment yet.
</p>
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